I think I’ve read this book before; I sort of had a deja vu idea of what was going to happen almost from the beginning of the story. Nevertheless, it was an enjoyable, if familiar, trip.

Tey’s detective stories are often concerned with elaborate lies, and impersonations, and unravelling the truth. Brat Farrar is just such a story, in which the truth about a thirteen year old boy’s disappearance nine years before the story actually begins, is a truth that needs a lot of investigation and patient scrutiny to come clear. And Brat Farrar, an orphan who’s impersonating the missing boy, is the only one who can discover what really, really happened to Patrick Ashby, the boy who’s come back from the dead in the person of Brat Farrar.

Tey’s writing reminds me of Daphne du Maurier (atmospheric), Agatha Christie (great plot development), and Ruth Rendell (psychological suspense).

Denny of The Book Den on Josephine Tey.

What a find! I’ve never read anything by Barbara Pym before, but I found her book, Excellent Women, to be reminiscent of Jane Austen (drolly observant), Mrs. Gaskell’s Cranford (insightful in regard to the ordinary), and even Jane Eyre, without the drama, but with the wry self-analysis.

Mildred Lathbury, the narrator of the story, does say near the beginning of the book: “I am not at all like Jane Eyre, who must have given hope to so many plain women who tell their stories in first person, nor have I ever thought of myself as being like her.” Miss Lathbury then proceeds to tell her story in first person and depict herself as a rather plain female who is always cast in the role of the excellent woman who offers sympathy and a cup of tea at crucial moments.

Perhaps there can be too much making of cups of tea, I thought, as I watched Miss Statham filling the heavy teapot. We had all had our supper, or were supposed to have had it, and were met together to discuss the arrangements for the Christmas bazaar. Did we really need a cup of tea? I even said as much to Miss Statham and she looked at me with a hurt, almost angry look. ‘Do we need tea?’ she echoed. ‘But Miss Lathbury . . .’ She sounded puzzled and distressed and I began to realise that my question struck at something deep and fundamental. It was the kind of question that starts a landslide in the mind.

Shades of J. Alfred Prufrock: “Do I dare/ Disturb the universe?”

More observations from Mildred Lathbury, excellent woman:

“Perhaps long spaghetti is the kind of thing that ought to be eaten quite alone with nobody to watch one’s struggles. Surely many a romance must have been nipped in the bud by sitting opposite somebody eating spaghetti?”

“I remembered my Lenten resolution to try to like him. It was getting a little easier, but I felt that at any moment I might have a setback.”

“I dare say a clever person with a fantastic turn of mind could transform even a laundry list into a poem.”

“I suppose an unmarried woman just over thirty, who lives alone, and has no apparent ties, must expect to find herself involved or interested in other people’s business, and if she is also a clergyman’s daughter then one might really say there is no hope for her.”

If you’ve read and enjoyed other books by Ms. Pym, what would you suggest next?